CHAPTER III.

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world.

Gather by him, as he is behaved,

If't be the affliction of his love or no

That thus he suffers for.

Break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

Hamlet.

THE road upon which the car was driving was made round an elevated part of the coast of the lough. It curved away from where the castle of The Macnamaras was situated on one side of the water, to the termination of the lough. It did not slope downwards in the least at any part, but swept on to the opposite lofty shore, five hundred feet above the great rollers from the Atlantic that spent themselves amongst the half-hidden rocks.